Bethel Park offers color guard for individuals with special needs
Say hello to the South Hills Stars, a newly formed color guard for individuals with special needs.
Offered at Bethel Park Community Center, the program is led by volunteer instructor Emily Columbus, who teaches the autistic support classroom at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School.
With the Stars, the emphasis will be on having fun.
“It’s basically just like a huge dance party,” Columbus said. “We also teach them the skill of spinning a flag or spinning ribbons, or pom-poming. Basically, anything they want to learn, we’ll try to teach them.”
Columbus brings similar experience from West Virginia University.
“When I was in college, I had two passions: color guard, as well as special-needs individuals,” she said of her master’s field of study, adding she told one of her professors, “I want to put these two together and create a special-needs color guard.”
The professor referred her to SteppingStones, a Morgantown, W.Va., nonprofit that provides recreation for children and adults with disabilities, and Columbus presented her idea to the organization’s board.
“We love it! Let’s do it,” she said she was told by the board.
Getting others on board with what became the Morgantown Stars was no problem.
“I had a ton of volunteers from the WVU color guard who wanted to help me,” Columbus recalled, “as well as SteppingStones volunteers.”
In Bethel Park, she anticipates drawing from fellow teachers, therapists and people who work with special-needs individuals, with the goal of having as close to one-on-one interaction with program participants as possible.
“We also have two middle schoolers and two high schoolers who want to help. So it’s cool to see different ages and different generations helping out,” she said.
For her part, community center director Cathy Muscato is happy to be working with Columbus.
“I was really lucky that Emily approached me. It coincided with talks we had already had, that we need to start programming more for special-needs populations,” Muscato said. “So it couldn’t have gone any easier. We were talking about it in-house, and then somebody with experience lands in my lap with a program she has already run.”
To gauge interest, she and Columbus distributed a survey that included potential days and times when the program might be optimal.
“Once we gathered all of that information, Emily and I chatted again, and what we are now able to do is, starting early March, run this program on Mondays here at the community center. And that was developed based on what people told us,” Muscato said. “We put it all together and then picked what worked for the majority of people.”
The program, open to anyone age 10 and older who has a disability, is scheduled from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. March 14 through May 23, with no class the day after Easter. The cost to take part in the program is $30 for Bethel Park residents and $35 for non-residents, and all participants will receive South Hills Stars T-shirts.
After they’re received instruction from Columbus and her volunteers, the plan is for participants to show their stuff for parents and at community events.
“If they’re having that much fun and working that hard, then the next logical step is, let them perform and let people see what they’ve done,” Muscato said. “I’m very confident this will be a success, and that will then just give us the space to add more programs. And everybody is excited about that.”
Register at park.bethelpark.net/CourseActivities.aspx?id=7 and select “Dance,” or by visiting the Bethel Park Community Center, 5151 Park Ave. Emily Columbus can be reached at SouthHillsStars@gmail.com.